《教授的房子》中的文化迁徙意识_英语论文

Cultural Migration in The Professor’s House

摘要

美国现代著名女作家薇拉·凯瑟致力于描写开拓者征服美国中西部的拓荒生活。在其作品中，结合美国移民浪潮的历史实际，细腻地刻画了一个个不同文化背景的移民，生动地描绘了其在美国文化大熔炉里融入并创新的过程。

在凯瑟极具迁徙主题的小说《教授的房子》中,文化迁徙具体表现在物理、心理和艺术这三种形式上。物理迁徙作为一种外在的迁徙形式，在空间或地域变化的过程中促使文化发生转移和碰撞。物理迁徙后的必然产物心理迁徙，是移民拔根后情感波动和精神变化的形象表现，在自愿与被迫两种状态下，具体体现为迷失自我或重新定位。由此，在心理迁徙之后，艺术，被注入了精神寄托的元素。移民们将情感迁徙到艺术上，趋向于从具有迁徙内容的艺术中找寻共鸣。

文化迁徙是时代发展的必然，现已成为一种全球化趋势。在当代社会中，随着迁徙行为的发生，文化也随之传播和融合，因此形成了文化多元化现象。但在文化迁徙的过程中，往往会出现滞后现象，即人的精神会跟不上迁徙步伐.凯瑟发现，在艺术中寄托情感，或重回原始文化中寻找艺术灵感和精神寄托，促使人们能在过去中定位自己，重新出发，拥抱变化。

总之，研究凯瑟这一作品，对于物理迁徙之后的心理迁徙的深入挖掘，以及移民迁移后精神文化的创建都有重大意义。尤其是对当今世界文化迁徙出现的各种弊端具有指导和借鉴作用。

关键词：凯瑟；移民；文化迁徙；《教授的房子》

Abstract

American modern writer Willa Cather devotes herself to the portrayal of the frontier life of pioneers in the middle west America. In her literary works which review historically the immigration in America, immigrants from different cultures and the integration and innovation process for those in adaption to the American culture are delicately described.

In one of Cather’s novels, The Professor’s House, which is of great migration characteristics, cultural migration is manifested in three forms: physical, psychic and artistic migration. Physical migration, an outward form, out of spatial or regional change, generates cultural transposition and collision. As an inevitable outcome of it, psychic migration for uprooted immigrants can be an apt description of emotional fluctuation and spiritual transformation. It embodies immigrants’ losing or re-positioning in the voluntary and forced circumstances. Thereout, art is injected into the element of spiritual ballast. That is, immigrants place their feelings on the art, tending to search for resonance from art with migratory content.

Cultural migration has already become the inexorable trend of times and has been globalized. In modern society, it achieves cultural communication and integration with a lot of moves, which promotes the diversity of cultures. However, in the process of cultural migration exhibits hysteresis. That is, psychic migration may fail to keep pace with physical migration. So Cather finds that immigrants reposing their affection in art, or returning to the historical culture to find artistic inspiration or inner sustenance can help them restart from the past to embrace change.   

In a word, studying the novel is of great significance for the in-depth study of thought migration along with physical migration and for immigrants’ spiritually culture creation. Especially, it is useful for guidance and reference to deal with issues of cultural migration. 

Key words: Cather; Immigrants; Cultural migration; The Professor’s House

Contents

I. Introduction 1

1.1 The Professor’s House 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

II. Cultural Migration throughout the Saga 4

 2.1 The Physical Migration 4

 2.2 The Psychic Migration  7

 2.3 The Artistic Migration 10

III. The Distinct Significance of Cultural Migration 13

3.1 Healing Power of Artistic Migration 13

3.2 Inspiring Effect of Historical Culture 15

IV. Conclusion 19

Bibliography 21